Blockchain platform Emercoin announces merged mining

In a bid to boost the trust and reliability of the Emercoin network, the Emercoin development team has decided to combine the production of both Bitcoin and Emercoin.

The company explained that as the algorithm used to produce both Bitcoin and Emercoin is a common factor, this “merged mining” is a sound and achievable technical decision. It believes that this will signal an increase in network difficulty by 500 times or more for the Emercoin blockchain.

“This increase in network mining power will help to increase the Emercoin network's credibility, which is a critical asset in today's cryptocurrency world. In short visibility + activity = legitimacy in the public eye. To this day, visibility has been the primary aspect holding back the adoption of Emercoin by the general public”, the official announcement reads.

Emercoin team further said that the move will also benefit miners. Currently with the SHA-256 algorithm, if Bitcoin miners were to "mine" Emercoin or vice versa, they would need to divert power away from one blockchain or the other. With merged mining, miners would be able to produce both Bitcoin and Emercoin, without losing the benefit of income from either blockchain.

The company said that the increase in network stability was a major factor in this decision, adding that the increase of the Emercoin blockchain complexity also signifies the growth of trust in Emercoin. With the increase in blockchain complexity, the probability and effectiveness of network attacks or deficiencies decreases massively.

Emercoin team emphasized that while the positive effects merged mining will have are clear, they believe that there are virtually no negative effects.

“The fact that the block reward will decrease with a higher complexity/difficulty is a negligible effect, since an enormous increase in difficulty of 10,000 times would only bring about a reward drop of approximately a factor of 10. The Bitcoins a miner will receive will offset any decrease in Emercoin reward per block”, it explained.